• Home
  • About
    • Who We are
    • Affiliates
    • Disclosures & Guidelines
    • FAQs
    • Privacy Notice
  • Funding Your Travels
    • Banking on the Road
    • Credit Cards in Our Wallet
    • Spending
  • Contact
    • Media
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Partnership Opportunities

i should log off

log off and live!

  • Travel & Planning
    • Travel Reflections
      • Good, Bad & Ugly
      • Re-Entry
    • Travel Resources
      • Travel Tips
      • Travel Bloggers
    • Reviews
      • Gear
      • Operators
      • Travel Clothing
    • Travel Gear
      • Cameras
      • Danny’s Clothes
      • Electronics
      • Health & Hygiene
      • Jillian’s Clothes
      • General Gear
  • Destinations
    • Travel Guides
    • Africa
      • Egypt
      • Ethiopia
      • Lesotho
      • Kenya
      • Malawi
      • Morocco
      • Mozambique
      • Namibia
      • South Africa
      • Sudan
      • Swaziland
      • Tanzania
      • Uganda
      • Zimbabwe
    • Asia & Oceania
      • Armenia
      • Cambodia
      • China
      • Georgia
      • India
      • Kazakhstan
      • Laos
      • Thailand
      • Turkey
      • Uzbekistan
      • Vietnam
    • Caribbean
      • Antigua
      • Cuba
      • Jamaica
    • Central America
      • Belize
      • Costa Rica
      • Guatemala
      • Honduras
      • Nicaragua
      • Panama
    • Europe
      • Armenia
      • Austria
      • Belgium
      • Czech Republic
      • France
      • Georgia
      • Germany
      • Hungary
      • Italy
      • Spain
      • Turkey
    • North America
      • Canada
      • Mexico
      • USA
    • Middle East
      • Egypt
      • Israel
      • Jordan
      • Oman
      • Turkey
    • South America
      • Argentina
      • Brazil
      • Bolivia
      • Chile
      • Colombia
      • Ecuador
      • Peru
      • Uruguay
  • Weekend Adventures
    • Cycle
      • Pastimes
        • Beer & Wine
        • Books
        • Cooking
        • History & Culture
    • Dive & Snorkel
    • Hike
    • Trek
    • Whitewater
  • Photos
    • Photo of the Day
  • Family Travel
You are here: Home / Archives for Twin Travel

Surviving Disney World With Toddlers

December 16, 2014 By Jillian

10347235_10102770580665984_2565926943526677332_nSo we made it. No, seriously. And it was better than we expected.  I’ll be the first to admit I dreaded the lines, the screaming kids and the inevitable break down our kids would have at Disney World, but you know what, it didn’t happen.  That’s right, our kids were wide eyed and excited about EVERYTHING at Magic Kingdom, and frankly who could blame them.

IMGP2211

Here’s our top 5 tips for surviving Disney World with toddlers:

  1. IMGP2199Bring your own stroller.  Our kids napped on the go at Disney, and having our stroller was so much easier than having a hard plastic rental.
  2. Download the app and book your fast passes for the morning!  You can get a secret fourth fast pass either at the fast pass+ kiosks or on your phone once you’ve used up your three for the day.  And once you’ve used the fourth you can get a fifth and so on…
  3. Tie something to your stroller so it is easy to identify!  And no, a mickey mouse tag is not unique in Magic Kingdom, nor is your kids nemo stuffed animal!
  4. There are actually some quiet places in Magic Kingdom for downtime – we took the girls to Tom Sawyer Island for some running around time and time away from the crowds.  They appreciated it and so did we!
  5. Disney’s baby room is going to be super crowded.  Just saying.  It’s great that they have it, but man it is crowded.IMGP2160

Have you survived Disney World with toddlers?  Share your tips below!

 

Filed Under: Destinations, Family Travel, North America, Travel & Planning, USA Tagged With: disney world, travel with twins, Twin Travel

Traveling With Twins: How To Pack

December 3, 2013 By Jillian

Traveling with twins requires a lot of luggage, right?  Well not necessarily.  Now that we’re well into family travel season we figured we’d reveal how we pack up our twins.  It’s not as much luggage as you think. In fact our first trip with the twins required NOT A SINGLE piece of checked luggage.  How did we do it?  We arranged for a pack n’ play on the other end, counted out the clothing we needed and got it all in compression sacks.  I felt  like a victory.

10979623803_c5c1cb39de

Since then however we’ve learned that we need more than just one extra set of pjs or outfit and our luggage has grown a bit.  As a couple who spent 21 months traveling around the world with only carry-on size backpacks however, we have fought the desire to over pack.  Here’s what we brought on our last trip to D.C. with our 5 month old twin girls:

Airplane Travel With Twins

Clothing: The clothes are the easy part.  You know how often you need to change your kid.  Some kids go through 3 or 4 outfits a day while others can wear the same onesie all day long. Like adults, mix and match outfits are good. Admittedly we are fortunate because we have twin girls so in theory they can share clothes meaning we don’t have to bring double of everything.  On the other hand, even with a boy and girl if you’re careful about how you pack (bringing gender neutral items) you may be in luck.  We’ve found (through an unfortunate night in Toronto!) that we should break the travel rule when it comes to baby clothes- look at everything you’ve pack and then ADD an additional set of pajamas and daytime clothes.

Baby Carriers:  For us, these are essential travel items – the twin stroller can be a bit cumbersome to navigate a city with. We love both our Moby Wraps and our Ergo Baby Carrier’s for different reasons. I love the flexibility of the Moby Wrap, especially when the girls are going to be wrapped up all day – it’s nice to be able to change positions and carry them in different ways.  We also use the Moby Wraps on the plane to carry the girls – besides being a great way for them to nap (yay!), it also helps keep hands off of them during boarding.  Maybe two sets of carriers is excessive, but the Moby’s are pretty small and I love the ease of the Ergo Carrier, especially when we’re taking them on and off a lot in one day.  It’s also a bit easier to show someone else how to use and have the girl’s positioned correctly.

Traveling with twins_OnBoard

Sleep Solution: We use our Pack N’ Play Twin Bassinet still when we travel with the twins.  We are way beyond being able to use the bassinets, but even without them our girls are pretty good sleeping together in the Pack N’ Play.  Note that Graco does not recommend putting two babies in one pack n’play.  That is a choice we have made.  Pretty soon the girls will be too big to share the pack n’play, but until then this works for us.  I looked at other options like the LulyBoo, but ultimately decided that the pack n’play was easier for us since we already had it.

Car Seats: It’s not an option to travel without the car seats unless you are going to a city and are planning to use public transportation (like a subway) 100% of the time. If you purchase a ticket for your twins or plan to use the car seat on board, make sure it is Airline approved. We have the Peg Perego 30/30 which is airline approved- we have brought them on board twice without a problem when there have been extra seats on board. Otherwise we have gate checked them without a single problem. Some airlines will even provide you with a thick plastic bag to check the car seat.  Otherwise you can get a protective cover or car seat bag pretty inexpensively.

Stroller: Although it isn’t the easiest to navigate around with, we always travel with our double snap n’ go stroller.  We use it to go through the airport quickly and efficiently with two squirming babies.  It’s easy to collapse and small enough to fit in the back of a rental car without a problem, plus it has a decently large bottom for storing carry ons.

Toys: Admittedly we are bringing more and more “entertainment” on each flight.  Traveling with twins doesn’t require double the toys, we just swap toys mid-flight to help keep things interesting.  We always travel with our letter links, which both girls love and are fantastic to use to clip things to both car seats and the stroller.  Thankfully they are silent, yet colorful and interesting enough to keep a baby amuse for a little while.  They are also our favorite teething toy right now. We also love these colorful animals from Lamaze: Freddie the Dragonfly (called Jacque in our house!) and Pierre the Peacock.  Again, colorful, interesting, but without the incessant music that so many toys have.  We also bring a few soft touch and feel type books, which the girls love to play with at this stage.

So there you have it.  That’s what we bring traveling with twins.  What would you add to the list?  What would you leave at home?

10979487056_2359d7b59c

Filed Under: Family Travel, Headline, Travel & Planning Tagged With: family travel, Twin Travel

Connect With Us

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Flickr
  • Pinterest
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Featured Posts

Our Bucket List
How We Travel For Free
$ Travel Tips

Recent Comments

  • Barbara on Kayaking Kauai’s Na Pali Coast
  • Lori Hubbard on Review: Eneloop Batteries and Charger
  • TK on The Trouble with Philadelphia

Banking on the Road

It can be very hard to keep track of your finances while you're on the road long-term. Be sure to check out how we took care of our finances while traveling and feel free to email us any questions you have.

Adventure Guides

Torres Del Paine
China Adventure
Uzbekistan Overland
Egyptian Odyssey
Malaria
Argentina Adventure
DIY African Safari
South Africa Guide
Bolivia by Bus
How-To African Visas

[footer_backtotop]

Copyright 2008-2015 · All Rights Reserved · Contact I Should Log Off · RSS · Partner With Us · Privacy